Duck-watching around the Llano Estacado can be addictive

Burr WilliamsMidland Reporter-Telegram

Published 4:08 am, Friday, November 11, 2011

Ducks floating on water is a very peaceful scene -- a hackneyed and trite image, I suppose, but it is truly peaceful. In the winter the ducks come to the Llano EStacado's salinas and playas, and to the rivers that border the region.

Thousands of ducks, and many different kinds, come for the winter. Duck hunters in West Texas have erected blinds on remote ranchland along the Pecos River for many years. Fewer duck hunters come now, because of a changing populace that does not realize a duck hunt is an adventure -- satisfaction in getting a meal and enjoying the wild. On a duck hunt coyotes howl, bobcats slink by, javelinas snort in alarm and the sunrise is incredible and hugely welcome for its warmth.

My parents were birdwatchers, and I spent hundreds if not thousands of hours watching ducks with them. They loved to find a location with several hundred ducks and slowly identify every duck in the group. Their chortles and exclamations when they found something unusual were fun, so I joined in by the time I was six or seven. When they found a rarity, one of them would stay with me while the other raced back to town to find a phone (yes, that now almost extinct antiquity, the payphone) to call the other birders. We would keep an eye on the rarity. I heard my first loon yodel thanks to that protocol.

Loons always come to West Texas in winter. Some non-bird loons, like me, live here all year. The bird called a loon is an incredible bird. You know its yodel if you watched the movie "On Golden Pond." The yodel is one of the wildest and most lonesome, quavering as the last rays of sunlight turn the world pink, fuchsia, orange and every other associated color. Loons rarely appear in Midland County these days, because the few suitable ponds have changed.

Lots of folks go to the Wadley Barron Duck Pond on "A" Street. With the drought and its subsequent drawdown of the water there, there may be fewer wild ducks that come back. Usually widgeons by the score speckle the water, filling the air with their whistling calls not expected from a duck. Diving ducks sometimes show up, and the little jaunty black and white bufflehead always is the crowd pleaser. They dive and pop up and chase each other most comically. Lots of folks use our interpretative sign at the southwest corner of the pond to learn just a little bit about what they are seeing and what a playa is.

I am fond of the teal. The big read cinnamon teal are not common, and the blue-winged teal just blow through in early fall and mid spring. The greenwing teal, with their red and green racing stripes on their heads and bright yellow tails, are dapper little ducks that explode off the water with amazing speed. Gadwalls are drab, with a black tail. Mallard males have bright green heads and orange feet. Shovelers are mistaken for mallards by people just learning to know the ducks of winter, but the big flattened bills gives their identification away.

Sometimes big white pelicans drift through the area, headed to larger reservoirs in the region. Sea gulls (of several species) often appear and, over at Moss Creek Lake east of Big Spring, sometime stay the winter in groups of hundreds. You can find redheads, canvasbacks, two species of scaup, three species of merganser and the list continues on.

Hanging around water is fun if you are watching the birds. Sandpipers of several species spend the winter along the shores of our waters. Great blue herons stand crane-like, but the thousands of sandhill cranes are found only at salinas, or salt lakes, and farm fields of sorghum and other grains. Marsh birds like soras and bitterns hide in cattails, and every other bird within five miles comes to get a drink. Once in a while a bald eagle will spend a few days along the shore, and wintering golden eagles swing by for a look, too.

One of the best ways to enjoy our warm winter afternoons is to go watch ducks. Take binoculars and a digital camera -- especially one with good zoom capability and ability to shoot in high resolution. It is such a peaceful thing to do, you might just get hooked on the pleasures of goofing off, and doing nothing but looking at ducks.